3mpire

I read that the engines were at 50% thrust -- what would be considered idle for a 777?

You won't feel exactly the same way because as you said your life experience has made you a different person. I would say having gone through a pregnancy, birth, and year of fatherhood that I am only now scratching the surface of what love truly is. I've learned that our capacity for love is not a static scale, and you are always a heartbeat away from unmeasurable highs and lows you previously could never comprehend. This is not to discount the sincerity or authenticity of your feelings of delirious love, but I would be reticent to hold that as the high water mark. Such things are by their nature fleeting. So no, you will never feel that way again. You will just feel something different that by comparison will be exponentially more powerful. Side note on the bully thing. When you see your one year old get cold cocked by an asshole two year old take the most intense feeling you had about a bully and multiply it by a large number. The universe of emotions is pretty big, but sometimes we only think about what we have explored to date

Total FILF (fed I'd like to...)

I am that guy -- dated a girl for six plus years, broke up, picked up with a different girl and within two years we have a kid and are getting married. so from that perspective, I would say my best advice to you is to move on. you're not doing yourself any favors by looking to the past. your ex is living in the present looking to the future, you should do the same. otherwise you might miss something that is right in front of you that is even better than before and not even know it. but if you believe you'll never do better, you won't. avoid that trap and you'll be fine.

Re: cultural deference - I've read this before too, but in this case the pilot landing the aircraft had not only less hours than the copilot in the 777, but less flight hours overall as well: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/07/08/asiana_crash_landing_attention_shifts_to_pilot_error_in_wake_of_san_fran.html So even if there is a cultural issue with deference to the person in "command", in this case by total flight hours and the "role" Lee Jeon-min was filling as trainger, he was senior. I don't know that a cultural deference to authority would apply in this case, as the one who should have spoken up, the copilot, had all the authority he needed to assert himself. I could be wrong. I have all of about five minutes behind the stick of a bonanza that was already at altitude (maintained heading and alt like a champ, tho ) so I'm totally unqualified in this arena

If you think your time is going to be limited now, wait till you have kids lol

I did that once. I gave a short delay and pitched and felt the bag come out but didn't feel it inflating as quickly as normal (normal being for a sub-terminal deployment--I do a fair number of them so I know that a sub-terminal deployment is kinda slow and lazy... this one felt like nothing so I was questioning whether the bag was locked). So I grabbed the risers and gave it a gentle tug to "help it along". How I got an opening that brisk going that slow is something I still don't quite understand. Moral of the story is a little goes a long way and, really, I just let it open in its own time. If your openings are too long just give it a little longer delay, maybe pop your riser covers before getting out... it just doesn't seem like a "problem" that needs fixing to me.

...so you can bring your wife and kids along for the ride?

I drank about two liters of water over the course of five hours yesterday and it was hot as balls. I'm sure that wasn't nearly enough to be properly hydrated, and another jumper and I were debating how much water you'd need to drink per hour in order to be hydrated by the book. I'm guessing one liter an hour? Either way any day jumping is a good day to me. Whether it's extra hot or extra cold it's just part of the deal. So long as you are not hindered from being able to conduct all your procedures just accept it as part of the sport and enjoy it. Just don't fly your base leg directly over the taxi way center line unless you want to go for a ride!

Doh. Forgot to add a "both" option. I've had the chance to do a few as ballast on recurrency or rating jumps but I kinda like my zero tandem streak I've got going.

Does having the canopy partially touching the rubber bands like that pose any kind of risk to malfunction, off-heading opening, or added wear to your main? In other words does stuff the corners to get the whole thing in there give you any advantage or is it more cosmetic (I.e. it just looks like a cleaner pack job?)

Just curious how many have never been a tandem student. I started on SL so I never did one.

I'm sure there is a lot more to it than what i outlined. i haven't been in the sport long enough to understand all (any) of it, so i'm sure you can on a biz by biz level come out with different answers to the same question. what it really comes down to is if you own a DZ you can make it into whatever you want to, it just depends on what is important to you and what you're willing to do to get it

I think it's a horrible post lol

I'm surprised it took this many posts for this question to come up. I believe fun jumpers are an integral part of a healthy dropzone ecosystem and the long term health of a dropzone both as a business and as place people want to be is closely tied to the fun jumper community. For many of the reasons already described above, you can see how a drop zone just starting out needs to have fun jumpers to help keep the business afloat. Also, for large operations, the economies of scale make the fun jumper community very profitable. I think where the case becomes difficult to make is in the middle, for the medium sized drop zone. The strength of the case for fun jumpers depends on what your long term goals and short term goals are as a business. If your long term goal is to grow the business to the point that you start to become a regional contender, a large dropzone that is a destination, with a bonafied fleet of aircraft, etc., then it is clear that a strong fun jumper community is an essential part of that. If your long term goal is to become a dependably profitable operation where costs are minimized, risk is minimized, and profits are maximized as a strongly positioned medium sized drop zone, then at a certain point the fun jumper becomes less strategically central to the health of the business. Let me explain: in the early stages of a drop zone, it appears that the prime value of a fun jumper is to pad margins when an aircraft is not full of tandems. They also serve as advertising by filling the sky with canopies and putting on a show for the locals who may have never seen a skydiver in the air before. They also grow into your staff. They are known quantities, and can help to grow the business both as TIs bringing in tandem dollars and as instructors growing the next crop of fun jumpers that will backfill the jumpers who quit or move on to other drop zones. After a while the business is doing great, and you have more and more money to reinvest in more rigs and you can lease a turbine aircraft. Continue with the formula and soon you have good regional recognition and plenty of tandem business coming in the door. Sooner or later, you're going to have enough tandem rigs, enough tandem instructors, and enough people calling your tandem hotline that you could fill nearly every single load. But while your business has been growing your fun jumper community has grown and expect more from you. Just having a turbine with a few slots isn't enough. They want events. They want coaching. They NEED instruction for canopy flight and wing suits both for their safety and to minimize the biz's exposure to risk. They'll start jumping in bigger and bigger groups. Asking manifest for 9 slots on the next load, not in three hours, but the next load. When you get to maximum capacity, it seems to me that you have to ask yourself if you want to sacrifice your short term profit margin to make the next big push to grow into that "large dropzone" category. Multiple turbine aircraft. Professional skydiving talent training, boogies/events bringing in national or international business and recognition, etc. That is a big investment to make, both in terms of money and time/passion. You could fail. Bigger risk, bigger reward. Or, you could consciously decide that the strength of the business at the current size is acceptable for the long term and in the short term any profits that come in can either be paid out to the ownership or invested in, say, buying your aircraft outright. For this goal, the fun jumper is tangential to your businesses future. Enough jumpers to eat up the handfull of empty slots and pad the margins, but not enough to get expectations too high. Unless you want to invest in all the things that you need to keep a larger fun jumper community content enough to reliably fill a second aircraft, there is not much of a business case for catering to the community beyond ensuring you have just enough to fill the gaps left over by tandems. I could be completely wrong. It's just my opinion.

A friend of mine has the green one up mushroom from super mario bros embroidered on his reserve pillow

Could you elaborate a little bit more about how aircraft leases to skydiving operations work? I'm assuming there are a few variations, but is it a cut of each jump ticket? A flat rate per clock hour? A flat rate per day/week/month? Is there much variation in the market place in terms of what kind of a deal you can get or is it pretty standard that a certain class of aircraft goes for the same rate no matter who or where you are?

I just might!

I missed this thread when it first started--read the whole thing start to finish. What a great thread with a lot of great information and a little history to boot. I'd vote this thread for top thread of the year if we had such a thing! (Though if anyone remember a thread you think is better feel free to pm me a link!) Thanks everyone who contributed to this one

That's what they say, when you buy local you always have a happy ending

And as a business man I'd say the savings I'd get by keeping fun jumpers out would buy me the best ad campaign since the geico gecko ;)

From strictly a business standpoint, what is the business case to justify having fun jumpers at your dz? I'm looking for actual business value, not feel good stuff about fostering community or giving back. If you wanted a business man or investor to buy into the business of skydiving what is the value of fun jumpers?

With regard to swinging wide in this case it is possible swinging wide on downwind leg could put you over the runway and create a conflict with air traffic. Not that taking legs wide or narrow is incorrect advice, I'm just pointing out that you not only have to take other canopy traffic into account but other aircraft as well. For the OP I would strongly advise asking a local instructor as they can speak to the specifics of your airport.

brown chicken brown cow

Interesting -- so as the slider comes down the pilot chute essentially retracted? Or was there still some bridle between the pilot chute and the line to the spider slider? Were the pilot chutes a lot bigger?